Couch Tales

"A psychoanalyst sits in his consulting-room waiting for the next patient. Thoughts, feelings and anxieties about his own current life begin to assault him. Partly as a way of dealing with the crisis in his own life, he begins to write fictional stories loosely based upon his patients' stories. Between each story the analyst produces a journal which comments upon the stories as well as his own developing personal situation." Couch Talesis a work of pure fiction, for the psychoanalyst and the patients are imaginary. However, they also reflect Roger Kennedy's work as a psychoanalyst, and the way that psychoanalysis reflects in depth on people's lives and narratives.

Roger Kennedy is a psychoanalyst in private practice, a training analyst and President of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He is Consultant Psychiatrist at the Family Unit, Cassel Hospital, and author of nine previous books, including Psychotherapists as Expert Witnesses (2005), and The Many Voices of Psychoanalysis (2007). He is also a published poet.